Year of the Golden Dragon Read Online Free PDF

remember where he’d taken it off, whether it was in their flat before he went to wash up or in the bathroom they shared with the other families.
    When Baba asked Hong Mei’s mother about it, she pretended not to know anything. Her father quickly became more and more anxious and searched everywhere for the pendant. Everywhere except the rubbish bin behind their apartment block.
    Hong Mei was amazed that her mother didn’t cave in and admit to what she’d done. She had seen Mama toss the jade into the rusty old garbage can. When Baba tried to use his second sight to trace his pendant and still couldn’t find it, he started bellowing for anyone and everyone to hear.
    “Where is it? Where is my jade? Someone has stolen my jade!”
    Hong Mei’s mother stood stoic and still.
    Soon there was pounding at their apartment door. When her mother opened it, three men in dark monk’s robes stood on the threshold. Hong Mei remembered that Mama seemed glad, maybe even a little relieved as she asked them inside. Hong Mei would never forget her father’s reaction to the visitors. He immediately dropped to the floor and began kowtowing to them. The sight of Baba kneeling before these bald, stern-looking monks scared Hong Mei into motion.
    Running to the back alley, she picked the pendant out from amongst rotting food scraps and other waste. She quickly rinsed the jade off at the outdoor tap and ran back inside.
    Arriving back in their flat, Hong Mei saw that her mother hadn’t moved to help or stand by her husband. But even odder was Hong Mei’s sudden feeling that it was not her place to interfere either. Deep down, part of her wondered if she should say something about her father’s jade, but something stopped her and she kept her mouth shut.
    She gripped Baba’s precious possession in one hand and clung to Mama with her other hand. Together, she and Mama watched the oldest looking of the men reach down and gently place his hand on her father’s head. Baba looked up into the monk’s face and nodded. Not a word was spoken.
    A moment later her father stood up, smiled weakly at Mama and her, then turned and walked out the door, followed by the dark-robed men. When the last one closed the door after him, Hong Mei felt as if she’d just woken up from a dream. Realizing that her father was gone, she made a movement to go after him, but her mother held her firm. When Hong Mei looked up at her mother’s face, she saw it was wet and glistening.
    That night, she and Mama had also left home, never to return. To this day, they seldom talked about it. Hong Mei had asked her mother only once where the monks had taken Baba. Mama said she wasn’t sure, but it would be a peaceful place for him to rest for as long as he needed.
    Sometimes, Hong Mei would close her eyes and try to use her own second sight to see if she could see her father or where he was. It never worked.
    For as long as she could remember, Hong Mei had seen things in her mind while the outside world seemed to disappear. They were similar to seizures in that she couldn’t stop them. But they were also different, since people around her couldn’t tell what was happening. Of course her father could, since she had inherited this trait from him.
    When she was small, her visions usually lasted only a few seconds. They were images of celebrations such as birthdays or the Mid-Autumn Festival, and often contained glimpses of her parents or friends. However, it wasn’t long before her visions began to change, becoming dark and scary. She was barely ten years old when she began seeing scenes of men dying in battle or women and children fleeing from intruders. And there was always fire. Fire and bodies.
    Her visions seemed to come when she least wanted them, times when she was stressed or nervous. Her father insisted that they were a gift, and taught her techniques that his own father had shown him for taming his inherited second sight. She learned how to focus and breathe so that